The dust has settled on one of the most highly contested House primaries in the 2024 election cycle.
Primary election results aren’t yet official — the secretary of state will certify results on April 12 — but two clear frontrunners in California’s 47th congressional district race will advance to the general election: former Assemblymember Scott Baugh and state Sen. Dave Min.
CA-47, represented now by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, is one of several outstanding swing seats in the country that is widely considered to be instrumental in deciding which party picks up the speaker’s gavel next year. A bitterly divided GOP is already losing ground in the House — more than 20 Republican lawmakers have called it quits so far in the 118th Congress, leaving their post early or deciding against seeking reelection.
“This is going to be a huge fight,” Matt Jarvis, an associate professor of political science at Cal State Fullerton, said of the open congressional race. “The amount of money spent in the fall is going to be massive.”
But Jarvis says the race is less about the two men vying for the seat but rather which party will represent it come next year.
“At the end of the day, they’ve got a ‘D’ and an ‘R’ after their names,” he said. “Democrats will be up in arms trying to get people into the House, and Republicans will be going to the polls to support Donald Trump.”
Jon Fleischman, the former executive director of the California Republican Party and an informal advisor to Baugh, has a different take: In a low-profile race, voters could be motivated by the political party attached to a candidate’s name, but CA-47 is anything but run-of-the-mill.
Fleischman pointed to the no party preference voters that make up nearly a fourth of the electorate in the district, saying candidates’ messaging on “swing voters issues,” such as affordability and lowering crime, will resonate with those voters.
“No-party-preference voters will decide the race,” he said.
Here’s a look at some of the factors that propelled Baugh and Min in the primary, and how they might set the stage for the general election in November.
Name ID
The better part of the two candidates’ winning formula was name recognition, said Jarvis. They were the only two candidates in the race who hold or have held positions in state government.
“Voters are very likely to not really know almost anybody in this race by default,” he said. “When voters lack that information, they go to some simple heuristics. They think, ‘We should go with a tried and tested elected official and not something new.’ Voters are, in the real sense, risk-averse”
Baugh, a former state assemblymember, was endorsed by party heavyweights, including the state and county Republican parties, incumbents in Orange County’s congressional delegation and House leadership.
He was also on the primary ballot in 2022 for the same race, meaning his name was more recently before voters in this district compared to other Republican candidates who ran for the open seat.
Numbers-wise, Min came out on top in Irvine, his home turf and the most populous city in the district. He also did well in the state Senate district he represents in Sacramento.
That and the endorsements he racked up set him apart from his main Democratic opponent, Joanna Weiss, founder of the Women for American Values and Ethics, a progressive nonprofit focused on public education and gun safety. Most notably, he had the backing of Porter, who opted to run for U.S. Senate this year instead of reelection.
“There’s one big endorsement difference: Porter endorsed Min,” said Jarvis. “The endorsement of a popular outgoing incumbent was probably big for a lot of people who had previously voted for Porter.”
Weiss ended up a distant third in the primary, with 19.4% of the vote.
For all the talk about how voters dislike incumbency and “career politicians,” they certainly don’t seem to vote that way, said Jarvis.
“They say they will not vote for politicians and that they hate politicians, but they tend to vote for them,” he said. “That’s honestly a large part of it.”
“Part of that, I think, comes down to the realities of the two-party competition,” said Jarvis. “Most voters are partisan, and most voters want to nominate someone from their party who has the best chance of winning.”
The cash influence
Millions of dollars were funneled into the CA-47 primary, including from the pro-abortion rights group EMILY’s List and the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. AIPAC alone poured nearly $4.5 million in anti-Min ads that highlighted Min’s 2023 arrest in Sacramento for driving under the influence.
AIPAC’s cash-riddled attempt to sink Min still has political analysts scratching their heads, especially because both Min and Weiss publicly stated their support for Israel, and neither called for a ceasefire.
But some surmise the anger that’s risen locally since Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, may have in part propelled Min ahead of Weiss, particularly since Orange County is home to a growing Muslim electorate and one of the largest Middle Eastern communities in the U.S.
Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College, said AIPAC’s presence in the primary “absolutely could turn off pro-Palestinian voters” who understand the lobbying group’s position of strong support for Israel.
“My sense is, highly-informed voters would know about AIPAC, and we might anticipate that the voters who cast a ballot at the primary stage are predominantly more highly-informed voters,” she said.
AIPAC did not respond to requests for comment.
Lulu Hammad, a longtime community organizer and co-founder of Yalla Indivisible, a local activist group advocating for Palestinian rights, said upon seeing the AIPAC ads, “it became very clear that (Weiss) will not get our vote.”
Hammad said she noticed two trends among her pro-Palestinian network: One, hesitant support for Min, and two, shopping around for an alternative. When voters looking for another option came across Democrat Boyd Roberts, the only candidate in the race to have called for a ceasefire, they immediately said, “That’s our guy,” said Hammad.
But in the field of 10, Roberts ended up in seventh place with 1.4% of the vote.
For many in the community, the election has become single issue, said Monica Candal Rahim, senior policy and advocacy manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Everyone has their individual points of view, but from conversations with the community, Israel’s war on Gaza looms large in importance,” she said. “Did this person support an immediate ceasefire or not?”
Stephaney Avital, a Newport Beach resident and member of Orange County’s Jewish community who helped put together a vigil for the victims of the Israel-Hamas war last year, said her main priority in this election is the safety and support of Israel.
“Many Jews are voting based on who is the strongest supporter of Israel,” she said.
In the CA-47 primary, Avital said she felt that person was Weiss. For the presidential primary, however, Avital said she registered as a Republican to vote for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, someone who expressed strong support for Israel on the campaign trail, she said.
And it’s possible that party switch will continue in the general.
“We see the Democratic Party and our current government making big mistakes when they abstain from voting at the U.N. and not support Israel. They have voted for more terrorism and (strengthening) Hamas,” she said.
“I have no choice but to vote Republican,” said Avital.
EMILY’s List, which funds pro-choice Democratic women, also shelled out big bucks to elevate Weiss’ campaign. Women Vote, the independent expenditure arm of EMILY’s List, spent nearly $1 million in support of Weiss.
“With respect to Weiss, she and Min adopted very similar positions on abortion, so I doubt it affected her campaign one way or the other,” said Danielle Thomsen, a political scientist at UC Irvine who specializes in gender and politics. “Her more limited name recognition and his prior political experience are what likely resulted in his victory.”
Abortion appears to be less salient in 2024, especially in California and New York, which could be attributed to the fact that abortion rights are enshrined in these states’ constitutions, and thus viewed as less endangered.
But Thomsen said it’s likely that any Democratic nominee will emphasize their support of abortion in November due to the unpopularity of the Dobbs decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion, and recent rollbacks on reproductive rights.
In 2022, when Proposition 1 — a constitutional amendment that enshrined protections for abortion in California’s constitution — was on the ballot, 61.2% of voters in CA-47 voted in its favor.
Source: Orange County Register
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